Part 2 (1/2)

”So what's going on? No one tells me anything,” replied Johnny Peters.

”You don't know?” asked Walter Long incredulously.

”No, I don't.”

Harry Warren looked at the control console full of meters, dials, and multicolored pilot and warning lamps. ”Is that thing functioning properly?”

Peters cast a rapid eye over the board. ”Perfectly,” he said, reaching out and giving one small k.n.o.b an imperceptible turn.

”How can you be so sure so fast?”

”There isn't a red lamp showing,” he said with a sweeping wave of his hand. ”Blue-green indicates operating circuits that are functioning properly; yellow-orange indicates feed-back information-a continuous incoming flow of variables-that keep the operating circuits so properly adjusted that they maintain a continuous show of blue-green. Hasn't been a red lamp shown since I've been with Teleportransit, but I'm told that whistles blow, bells ring, cannon are fired and-”

”Well, something's gone to h.e.l.l in a handbasket.”

”For instance, what?”

”Our teleport system isn't working.”

”Nonsense!” Peters pointed to a large dial. ”Load's low tonight, but we're still making a couple of-”

”Stop them!” yelled Walter Long. ”Peters, since somewhere about a quarter to five this evening, people have been a-pouring into the entrances, and not coming out of the exits.”

”But that can't happen.”

”You explain that to four million commuters-if we ever get 'em back.”

”And if we don't, you try to explain it to their heirs and a.s.signs,” said Harry Warren.

”Is this condition local or widespread?” asked Peters.

”It's the entire system.”

”No,” said Peters, ”I mean, has Pittsburgh or Greater Chicago reported the same mess-up?”

”That we don't know.”

”Then let's find out,” said Peters. On the console, he snapped a switch. A videoplate came to life, there was a brief ringback burr, and then a man's face appeared.

”Peters here, Megapolis. Teleportransit, Inc.”

”Hi. James Gale. Pittsburgh Rapid. What's on your mind?”

”Have you any trouble reports?”

”No. What kind of trouble?”

”No tie-ups?”

”No. Now what can happen to a teleport circuit to tie it up?”

”I don't know, but everybody who goes into our machine just simply stays there.”

”But that's not possible.”

”All right. So that makes it a manifestation of the supernatural and it's swallowed more'n four million commuters, and it's continuing to swallow them at the rate of about fifteen hundred per minute.”

”Turn it off,” advised Jim Gale.

”I don't dare,” said Johnny Peters. ”I have the uneasy feeling that continued operation is the only contact that lies between here and the limbo they're lost in. I've no sound, scientific logic for that queasy feeling; it's just a conviction that I must follow.” He turned to look at Walter Long and Harry Warren. Both of them looked blank until Johnny Peters said, ”Unless I'm ordered to,” at which they both shook their heads violently.

”Well, this I've got to see,” said Gale. ”I'm coming over.”

”Whoa!” cried Peters. ”I'd advise some other mode of transportation.”

”Urn ... guess you're right. So is there anything I can do to help?”

”Yes,” said Walter Long quickly. ”Get in touch with your top-level technical staff and tell them what we're up against. You can also call Boston and Was.h.i.+ngton and ask them what to do. See if the best technical brains of all three cities can get trains or cars to come here as fast as possible. In the meantime, we'll have to muddle through with a junior technician, a business administrator, and one puzzled personnel relations counsel.”

Throughout Megapolis, the news was spreading fast. In an earlier day, the radio in the automobile or in the depot bar would have spread the news like wildfire. But the habit of the commuter was to get where he was going first, and then relax to get the news. The news was thus delayed in its dissemination by the recipient's habits, not by any machination of press, government, big business, or unfavorable foreign powers.

The transits-per-minute meter began to taper off in an increasing drop as the news was spread. But it did not drop to zero because there were those that had not heard, those who did not believe, a number whose curiosity exceeded their good sense, a few misguided self-sacrificers, and a low but continuous counting rate pegged up by sheer habit. For just as people during a power failure will enter a room and flip the light switch in a reflex action, people preoccupied with other things turned into the teleport booth out of habit and whisked themselves into limbo.

More time pa.s.sed; it takes time for the central nervous system of a vast Megapolis to react to a widespread emergency. Had one called two and the two then called four, and the four called eight, the word would have spread fast. But plans and programs such as this fail unsafely at the first breach in the pattern for there is no way of bridging the missing link. So in the usual ponderous way, the commissioners called the captains and the captains notified their lieutenants, and soon the word was spread to the patrolmen. And where there was a missing link to bridge, the radio called the patrolmen, firemen off-duty, members of the civil defense, and anybody who could be sworn to duty.

And not a few of these succ.u.mbed to habit by trying to take the teleport system to the teleport station they'd been a.s.signed to prevent people from using.

Ultimately, the stations were under control and the transits-per-minute meter was down to an unreadable, but still-not-zero figure. By this time, the hidden, unknown plane beyond the entrance of the teleports had its share of policemen and other keepers of the civic peace.

Johnny Peters looked at the ma.s.s of gray hammertone finish, chromium, and gla.s.s, and he realized a helplessness, a complete futility, the utter impossibility of doing anything useful. For what had always worked properly had stopped abruptly at about four-thirty in the afternoon. It was as if the sun, having come up on time since the dawn of eyes to watch for it, failed to show.

For Teleportransit was to Megapolis as hundreds of other teleport companies were to their respective cities. Take twelve years of handling commuter traffic five days each week and multiply that by the number of cities that had solved the commuting problem by licensing teleport companies, then quote the figure as a statistic with zero accidents in transit. The odds begin to approach the probabilities that the sun will not be late tomorrow morning.

Still, to Johnny Peters, Walter Long, and Harry Warren, there was no realization of the enormity of the situation. It was too impersonal, too remote, too vast. That four or five million human souls had vanished into their machinery was a fact they could not comprehend.

But as the word spread throughout the city, millions of individuals became intimately aware of a shocking, abrupt personal loss. And for the number who fold their hands and say ”Kismet,” there are an equal number who want to strike back. And so part of the public became a mob.

The night watchman on duty at the main door of the Teleportransit Building saw the mob approach but did not comprehend until the leaders crashed the big plate gla.s.s doors with a timber. As the mob came boiling into the lobby of the building, the night watchman fled in terror, taking the obvious way out along with two of the mob who pursued him into the teleport booth.

Had there been no stairs, the elevator system might have cooled some of the anger, for a mob completely articulated into tiny groups out of communication with one another loses the ability to regenerate its ma.s.s anger. The leaders, without a shouting ma.s.s behind them, might have listened to reason. But the elevators, at night, would respond only to authorized employees with special keys. And so the mob, strung into a broad-fronted wave, trailed up the stairs after the leaders. The toil of climbing added to their anger.

To prove the paranoiac quality of the mob, the air-conditioning in the Teleportranist Building did not give them any comfort; it made them resent even more the men they held responsible because they sat in comfort to perpetrate the outrage.

Within the equipment room, the status remained quo. But not for long.

The heavy doors m.u.f.fled the sound of the mob; by the time the noise penetrated loud enough to attract the three men in the room, the same timber used to crash the main doors came hurtling through the doors to the equipment room.